Thankyou THH .. Could you elaborate on how CCS affects the accuracy or precision and what MS might do to mitigate it.

Robert: you I guess realise that I cannot answer that in terms of particulars, specifically I can't say whether in this case it would be significant.

Kirk Shanahan coined the acronym (conditional calibration shift or something - I forget). But the idea, as I understand it, is simple. deltaT in calorimetry is related to power by a calibration curve experimentally derived from the tested system, or rather from a similar control, under conditions where power in is known.

In the case of LENR this is the system with similar but thought non-LENR active components.

If, however, the effective average thermal resistance between inner and outer TCs changes between active and control hat will shift the cal curve. Changing conditions in the inner chamber (e.g. temperature gradients different from control) can do this unless the thermal resistance is identical everywhere - an impossibility. For example electrodes can give additional thermal conductivity as the go though the inner/outer chamber barrier. A well enough designed system can mimimise this but it is difficult to do it well. So a necessary validation is to check that ant such effect is sufficiently bounded.

The key point here is that a Thermal resistance shift of say 5% will change the input power temperature difference by 5%. That is equivalent to an apparent excess power (if the thermal resistance is higher in active than control) of 5%.

KS argues that this shift could be always positive in F&P cells. (In the case of cells with in-cell recombiner there is a plausible mechanism - in other it is unclear why shifts would always be positive).

Of course we don't know that shifts are always positive. They are systematic and dependent on experimental design. It can be argued that apparatus leading to null and negative shifts would be viewed as non-working experiments and corrected without wider reporting, unconsciously via Darwinian survival and replication of good setups if in no other way.

As another possibility. Especially in systems using H or D, TCs can be contaminated and shift voltage though a test. Therefore unless, as another check, calibration is done both before and after the active test, it is necessary to be very sure that the TCs are properly sealed. In some cases (notable Dennis Letts famous hot balls experiment) this was not done. Was it done here? You would not expect Pt vs Pd to affect this one, but H vs D certainly would affect it, because H is much more diffusive through solids than D.

I sometimes think that LENR experiments are specially designed to make false positives likely: but rather it is the other way round: experiments with non-obvious false positives get classed as LENR anomalies easily, because LENR papers generally have a much lower standard of critique than normal science.

This is a fascinating well documented replication of F&P style experiments, showing results that would be expected from CCS, and a system that is very possibly susceptible to that.

A significant CCS effect does not exist, so in that sense all calorimetry is equally "susceptible" to it, just as all calorimetry is susceptible to the effects of invisible unicorn farts. In this case, however, calibrations show it is not susceptible to this imaginary effect or to actual effects. That's the whole point of calibrations!

A significant CCS effect does not exist, so in that sense all calorimetry is equally "susceptible" to it, just as all calorimetry is susceptible to the effects of invisible unicorn farts. In this case, however, calibrations show it is not susceptible to this imaginary effect or to actual effects. That's the whole point of calibrations!

Jed: do you have any evidence for such a sweeping negative statement? When anomalous results exist we must check and recheck all old -school assumptions. And how about the TC contamination effect, which certainly does exist...

I do not understand why people continue fake-discussions with known LENR denier-trolls!

From Kirk we know that he has certain skills that are useful for the field from others I would say they just troll.

It would be far more interesting to ask why Staker only sees about 10% excess heat, where there could be much more (in a sustained reaction - not a boil off.).

Why is Staker not adding traces of some isotopes with long living magnetic states, that can store the field for some seconds? Why did people miss this effect for about 30 years? Some believe that silver is poisoning in Pd, what might be a misperception, because it is always produced by Pd-D fusions. In fact it could be that this caused some run aways!

When anomalous results exist we must check and recheck all old -school assumptions. And how about the TC contamination effect, which certainly does exist...

On the other hand, we do not need to entertain impossible theories put forth by crackpot who thinks that a bucket of water placed in a room will evaporate overnight -- theories which have been definitely blown out of the water by experts in the Marwan paper. Discussing the CSS is like discussing phlogiston theory.

TC contamination has nothing to do with the CSS. It would show up during calibrations, producing the wrong answer. Or do you doubt that for some reason?

Do you know of a better way to test or TC contamination, other than calibrating? Oh do tell us what it is. If calibration does not work, then are you saying this problem cannot be detected, tested for, or falsified?

I suppose your next gambit will be to say there might be an undetected error. Yes indeed, and by that logic we can't be sure Lavoisier and Krebs were right, and metabolism really is CO2 production. It might be animal spirits! It might be energy beaming in from Mars. Let's spend months discussing these and other crackpot theories instead of science that has been well established for 230 years.

You can never reach a conclusion if you ignore the fundamentals of the experimental method, such as when you pretend that replications are not replications, and that calibrations do not work, and problems they would clearly show up might be hiding instead. Because some nutcake has a theory . . .

calibrations show it is not susceptible to this imaginary effect or to actual effects. That's the whole point of calibrations!

No, it isn't. The point of calibrating is to make the measured output value equal to what it is assumed to be equal to. In the case of calorimetry, that would be the input power.

The quality of the calibration is not relevant to whether a CCS can or does occur, by whatever mechanism. You can have a perfect calibration, correlatioon coefficient =1 (infinite precision), and still have a CCS.

Ad hominem attack aside, and just for those people who 'like' this type of comment...

Reanalyzing data under a different initial assumption, and then finding that process negates the prior conclusion, is not a 'theory', it is evidence. A theory would be where a sensitivity to heat distribution changes is postulated to affect the values of the calibration constants that produce Pout=Pin. A mathematical demonstration of that solidifies the theory's validity (but does not necessarily 'prove' it). Then, finding a systematic trend in the reanalyzed data that indicates the 'active' electrode becomes inactive in a predictable number of cycles is additional evidence for the theory and for the idea that there is chemistry at work, especially when the proposed chemistry produces the necessary change in the heat distribution originally postulated. However, one still needs replication (with control) to 'prove' the theory. That effort must come from those who are equipped to do it.

The above quote is just an attempt to create 'truth' by saying what one wants to be true enough times. In the real world of science, that doesn't work.